Friday, February 01, 2002

Mead! "If it's good enough for dru-ids, running nekkid through the woo-ids, drinking strange fermented flu-ids, then it's good enough for me!" Got a cell phone? Want it to play the Super Mario Brothers tune? Go here. Or here if you want the theme from Dr. Who, or the A-Team. (You know you want the A-Team theme...) Live off the grid, and save the environment! Natalie Engel's chest - another link. This was (although it is now missing) the first I ever read of online journals. Tore at my heartstrings, let me tell you. It was fascinating, at the time visually well done, and intensely personal. Truly the chronicle of one person's life at school. Loneliness, alienation, desperation, joy, hope, affection, and everything else on the spectrum. I wonder whatever happened to her? Apart from the fact that she was nominally fictional, if almost entirely autobiographical. It was miserable, it was despairing, it was bitter, it was sad...it was beautiful. It was a real person! (more or less) It was as if someone had taken their soul and poured it onto a web page. To quote Dar Williams, "she said 'I don't know what he meant to me, I just know he affected me...'"
Even now, without the journal, I still link to it. Must have really touched me deeply somehow, I'm not sure why. Perhaps because I felt so alone at that point in my life...that was during my depression phase, when I went to a shrink and got the official diagnosis of "You're just lonely". Great, dude, thanks...I pay you how much? By the way, nice midlife crisis you're having - I like the convertible red jaguar, it really screams balanced and centered. (Really, the poor guy was kinda funny, when you get right down to it...and he did try, so I can't fault him too much.)